Life — July 20, 1922 — page 15: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a single-panel cartoon from *Life* magazine (page 13) depicting an outdoor café or restaurant scene with well-dressed patrons dining. The sketch shows multiple figures at tables in what appears to be a European setting, with buildings and foliage in the background. The caption reads: "Say, Buddy—what's the French for stony broke?" The joke is a play on American slang and language barriers. One man asks his companion for the French translation of "stony broke" (an American idiom meaning completely out of money). The humor relies on the contrast between casual American vernacular and formal French, and likely suggests that wealthy Americans abroad were spending money freely in European restaurants and cafés—so much so that the question itself seems absurdly out of place in that luxurious setting.